Trade ministers of 21 Asia-Pacific economies agreed on Saturday to urge the WTO to resume negotiations for new global trade rules by next month, expressing particular concern over lack of market access for agriculture products.
"This meeting has given a very important push" to the Doha round of WTO talks which collapsed in the Mexican city of Cancun last September, US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick told a news conference after a two-day ministerial meeting in Pucon of the APEC forum.
The ministers in a statement urged all WTO members "to intensify their efforts in coming weeks to agree by July on the key issues that will provide a clear way forward for the Doha negotiations."
The APEC economies control nearly half the world's trade and their joint statement was seen as a catalyst for pushing the Doha round forward.
A major concern among the ministers was market access for agricultural products, which remains the biggest obstacle in current WTO negotiations, although there has been some recent movement from developing countries.
"Agricultural market access is lagging behind export subsidies and domestic support," the APEC ministers said. They called for "special attention to be given to finding a way forward."
The US, the EU, Japan and South Korea have been blamed by developing countries for using subsidies to restrict their markets to exports. The complaint by developing nations over what they consider unfair agricultural subsidies totaling some US$300 billion paid by rich nations was at the center of the impasse in the talks in Cancun. Developing economies were also accused of erecting market barriers to imports.
WTO chief Supachai Panitchpakdi, who briefed the ministers, said some APEC economies also had not made a clear stand on market access for agriculture products. However, he declined to name them.
"Even though we have different perspectives on this, there is a need now to come out with a framework on agriculture market access," Zoellick said.
The ministers in their statement sought a "special commitment" from WTO members for abolishing all forms of agricultural export subsidies within a target date.
The US and Europe have lately offered concessions on export subsidies and asked the developing nations to also make equally generous offers.
Another flashpoint in WTO negotiations which seemed to have been eased in Pucon were the so-called Singapore issues -- trade facilitation, cross border investment and competition, and transparency in government procurement.
The ministers called for only trade facilitation to be included as an item for negotiation in the WTO instead of all four issues to be included in the Doha Round.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day